Over the last three decades, despite the headwinds, the global aviation industry has experienced a golden age: a phase of relative surge in new airline chains, and exponential growth driven by commercial passenger airlines in the global market.
Having said that, even though we witness newer airline companies there are not many profitable chains of airline companies in the world. The reason being simple, with high operational costs, low pricing points and high entry barriers, generating significant net profits still remains a challenging endeavor for most airline companies.
Sustaining Profitable Aviation Operators
Operators continue to come and go, but the scaling of the few profitable airline chains has sustained longer than many would have predicted. Likewise, aviation finance has grown with fleet scale, with dozens of specialist lessors now serving a distinct global need.
In this paper, our focus would be more inclined towards the selected issues of traditional aviation. Particularly, the long-term potential related to development in:
- Maintenance Robotics
- Supersonic Engineering
Delving deeper into the above long-sighted opportunities in the aviation industry, robotics has played a vital role in shaping the industry. Accounting for around 20% of a plane’s operating cost and a tedious prolonged servicing period multiple technology companies have hereby observed the gap and plunged promising to bring down the cost.
Focus on Maintenance Robotics and Supersonic Aviation Engineering
Advances in drone technology, robotics, machine learning, and AI, have huge potential to streamline maintenance schedules and processes. Examples abound: Lufthansa Technik, has deployed a robot capable of analyzing and carrying out crack inspections on engine components.
Skywise, an open data platform developed by Airbus helps operators to optimize decision-making in maintenance, engineering and flight operations, in turn solving the focal problem faced in the aviation industry, operational costs.
Many more examples could be sighted as AIRVOLUTION, a cloud-based solutions company for airline component repairs, or SIA partnering with Safran to collaborate in the field of aviation data analytics.
Supersonic Engineering
Further moving to the other prospect, we consider as a long-term potential in this industry, Supersonic Engineering. The demand for supersonic jets has observed renewed enthusiasm, being a very niche and concentrated market in itself proponents of supersonic cite several reasons to be optimistic about: more efficient engines; advances in engine cooling technology facilitating ever-higher speeds (including hypersonic); advances in material science and biofuels; improved understanding of sonic booms and how to manage them, and a perceived willingness of passengers in the higher end of the market to pay a premium for lower journey times.
Conclusion
In conclusion, we believe with new technological advancements, improved robotics, pressure to digitize and reduce emissions, and companies eyeing to turn their aviation businesses profitable, the industry hereby will continue to witness its relative golden age in the coming years.
